Thomas Goirand <zigo@debian.org> writes:
> On 05/11/2012 06:39 PM, Gergely Nagy wrote:
>> Long story short, I still don't see what the fuss is about.
>>
> The fuss is about we're being told that there will be silent
> overwriting of configuration files without being prompted about
> changes, which potentially, will make it horrible to manage
> upgrades in a decent way without knowing the corner cases.
There will be no overwriting of configuration files. There might be
changes to defaults, like in every piece of software that is out there.
When defaults change, unless care is being taken, things will break,
indeed. That is not specific to systemd, and has nothing to do with its
defaults being under /lib/systemd.
Let me tell you three scenarios, just to demonstrate what I'm getting
at:
We have three programs:
* We have a program, that has a few defaults compiled in, and reads its
configuration from /etc/program.conf. Lets call this the 'def-etc'
program.
* We have another, that has no built in defaults, ships a config file in
/etc/program/defaults.conf, and includes snippets from
/etc/program/conf.d/. We'll call this 'def-conf.d'.
* We have a third program that comes with no compiled-in defaults, but
has them in /lib/program instead. It reads configuration from snippets
under /etc/program/. We'll call this 'def-lib'.
In the first case, since there is a single config file, lets assume we
modified that. In the other two cases, we placed snippets in the
appropriate directory, and did not touch the config file that contains
the default config.
When the first program changes its default, since it is compiled in, you
get no notofication, no prompt, no nothing - it wasn't in a config file,
it was compiled in.
When the second program changes its default, since you did not modify
the default config, that will be overwritten, and the only notice you
get is a "Configuration file updated" scrolling by, no prompt
whatsoever, no visible news, just something you've grown to expect, and
trust your tool to handle right.
When the third program changes its default, since you can't modifiy the
default config, you get no notification, no prompt, no nothing.
In all three cases, you get no prompt at all, because no tool in Debian
can handle the change of default settings. We're not prepared for that,
nor can we ever be. We can handle configuration change, but defaults are
*not* configuration. Configuration is things you're allowed to change.
> On top of that, we're being told that this is the reason why
> we should use this system, which is totally the inverse of
> what we've been doing in Debian for years.
I can't speak for anyone else who thinks etc-overrides-non-etc isn't the
work of the $devil, I merely think that this is a valid way to treat
default (unchangeable by the user) settings. It will not work for
everyone, nor should it.
But for specific cases, it is useful, and makes sense. That is all.
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